Micro Finance for Rural Development

INTRODUCTION

Lack of knowledge, skills and appropriate capital are among the challenges that are faced by Small scale farmers in the rural areas in Africa. These rural farmers therefore lack the capacity to make their farming business as efficient as possible and hence suffer economically. Organizations and institutions including microfinance have come to solve farmers’ problems but still farmers experience the challenges because they have no voice in these organizations as well as in the interventions that are designed to solve their problems. To access finances, most microfinance institutions use farm records as collateral and individual farmers in a stable farmer group as granters. This 5 days course sought to empower participants with knowledge on process of accessing rural finance.

DURATION

5 days

TOPICS TO BE COVERED

Module 1

• Rural financial services
• Requirements from microfinances for credit to farmers.
• Linking farm record keeping to microfinancing

Module 2

• Sustainable farmer groups with microfinancing
• Agriculture value chain financing
• Smallholder farm produce marketing.
• The role of markets in rural and agriculture financing.

Module 3

• The risk of financing farmers can be mitigated
• Bundling farm financing with other linked services.
• Crowding in key players in farm financing.

Module 4

• Evaluating a cost benefit analysis from farm productions.
• Harnessing the commercialization aspect among smallholder farmers.
• Tradeoff in farming.
• Agriculture insurance to cushion the farmer against crop yield loss

Module 5

• The impact of agriculture financing on poverty reduction and rural development.
• The effect of farm credit on increasing agricultural production and farm efficiency.
• Financial innovations to boost the uptake and use of farm credit.